Page 89 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
“I want you towantto come home,” Luke said, and there was a sudden sheen of perspiration across his forehead, like he’d broken out in a cold sweat. “You don’t owe me an answer. But I wanted you to know. If that is something you want as well—you have only to tell me.”
Lizzie might have left her coin upon the nightstand beside her bed at Ambrosia, and the security it offered along with it, but Luke’s hand was so steady, so firm around hers, that she thought…perhaps it was nearly as good, just for the moment.
Chapter Thirty Three
Two days later, a scratch at the door of his study pulled Luke’s attention from the array of papers laid out upon his desk: bills that required payment; letters from various land agents; a handful of flirtatious missives from past lovers—more than a few of which had been sprinkled with expensive perfumes. He was given to understand that the effect was meant to be seductive, evocative of past pleasant memories. But the blend of cloying, contrasting scents that had been spritzed upon the notes produced nothing more than the stirrings of a headache, and he had nudged them toward the far edge of the desk for later disposal.
“Enter,” he called, rubbing at the bridge of his nose in an effort to relieve himself of the eye-watering aroma. The door slid open, and he suffered a shock of disbelief for a long moment, held utterly motionless with the bridge of his nose pinched in one hand while a letter from a land agent dangled from the other. “Lizzie,” he said, shooting to his feet so abruptly that he nearly overset the chair in which he had been sitting. “What are you doing here?”
Her mouth opened—presumably to offer an explanation—but before she could voice it, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Lady Glendale has written you again,” she said instead, and her hands just briefly curled into fists at her sides before she relaxed them once more.
Reluctantly, Luke’s gaze slid to the stack of letters—stinking of perfume, unopened—at the corner of his desk. “How did you guess?”
“She favors the scent of roses.”
She’d managed to pick out that scent amongst the rest of them? To him, the lot of them together had smelled like a rotting flower garden, distinct scents indistinguishable. And then he recalled Susan’s warning of some weeks earlier, recalled that he had left Lizzie to her own devices at so many events where Lady Glendale—amongst others—would undoubtedly be present. “I don’t acknowledge them,” he said. “I haven’t in weeks. Months.”
Her expression was more serene than he expected he would have managed beneath similar circumstances. “I know,” she said, and strolled forward to rifle through the letters there. “I suspect if you had, I would not have heard the end of it. Lady Glendale is—not particularly pleasant.”
A polite way of phrasing it. “I’ll put an end to it,” he said.
A light laugh. “I can manage her. She is not the first to be unkind,” Lizzie said. By the complete lack of surprise upon her face as she sorted through the letters, Luke guessed that this was not the first time she had noticed them. Or from whom they had been sent. “But she is rather more disagreeable than most,” Lizzie added.
“She was one of those who had aspirations of becoming my marchioness,” Luke said. “I did not mislead her; she was well aware I had no interest in marrying. I broke off our arrangement as soon as I realized that she had formed certain expectations of me, and I have no interest in renewing my acquaintance with her.”Howevermany letters she might’ve sent. However manyanyof them might have sent. And a good portion of it was just there—the evidence of his disreputable past, held within the grip of Lizzie’s slender fingers.
“I don’t suppose you can control what people choose to send to you,” she said, carefully, laying down the letters once more.
“No,” he said, sidling toward her. “But she would never have troubled you had I not given her cause to do so with my lack of attention. She will not have cause—or opportunity—to trouble you so again.” For once, it wasn’tdoubtthat flitted across her face. Rather something more like cautious optimism; a hint of warmth flickering there in her dark eyes. “Lizzie, what are you doing here?” he asked again.
“I decided that I have availed myself of Mrs. Knight’s hospitality long enough,” she said, and her lashes shaded her eyes as she bent her head to glance down at the papers strewn across the desk. “But it seems I find myself displaced, as there is no furniture in my room. I came to inquire where I was meant to sleep.”
Ah. So she had discovered that much. “With me,” he said. “You did not like waking alone. You shouldn’t have to. Idolisten.” Luke cleared his throat, resting one palm flat upon the desk. “The room is yours to do with as you please.”
A tinge of pink spread across her cheeks, and her right hand wound around the small reticule that dangled from her left wrist. “As I please,” she repeated slowly. “Even if that is to have my furniture back?”
“Even then,” he said. “If you wish it, it is only the work of an afternoon to have the furniture returned and reassembled.” She was already tugging at the strings of her reticule, slipping her fingers inside, and he knew what he would find revealed.
A flip of the coin; outcome guaranteed before she had even thrown it. It landed upon the desk, its impact blunted by the papers beneath it—heads up.
“What do you want, Lizzie?” he asked, and she held her silence for a long moment while she collected the coin once more, as if vacillating between potential answers. Her gaze lingered upon the small stack of letters perched upon the corner of the desk, then on the coin in her palm, and at last it landed upon his face, sharp and searching, as if it might peel back the disparate layers of him and reveal the truth as only she could understand it.
“A sitting room,” she said at last, and then in a rush, as that pink hue deepened in her cheeks: “One of my own. With furniture I have chosen for myself, and draperies, and paper-hangings—”
“Of course.” The words conveyed a measure of his relief—that she had not returned home only to withdraw at the earliest opportunity. “Of course. You can change anything you like. I’m certain I said—” But she hadn’t thought he’dmeantit, he realized, when her gaze slid away from him. He had been so resistant to her presence, to anything she might have needed from him, that she had not cared to test the truth of his words. Just in case they had been as empty as everything else he’d offered her.
Lizzie cleared her throat, repositioning the coin. “And I would like—”
“Yes.”
A little laugh caught in her throat as she caught the coin as it tilted and fell back into her palm, and she lifted it once more as if he might’ve forgotten its purpose. “I haven’t evenaskedyet.”
“My answer is stillyes.” Luke reached out across the scant inches that separated them, laid his hand over hers, capturing the coin between them. “What do you want?”
Again the words tumbled out. “I want you to come with me. I’m still not well-acquainted with London. I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Reflexively, her fingers curled into his.
“Yes,” he said again. “I’ll go with you.”
“Today?” Had he imagined the slight intonation of hope there in her voice?
